


Unrequited

by MistyBeethoven



Category: Constantine (2005)
Genre: Asexual Character, Asexual!John Constantine, Asexuality, Asexuality Spectrum, Christianity, Christmas, Christmas Miracles, Churches & Cathedrals, Gen, Having Faith, John Constantine Needs A Hug, Loneliness, Meditation, Miracles, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Oh My God, POV First Person, POV John Constantine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:54:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21956980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MistyBeethoven/pseuds/MistyBeethoven
Summary: After John Constantine visits two friends on Christmas Day, he visits an abandoned church and contemplates his love for That which cannot love him back.
Relationships: John Constantine & Angela Dodson, John Constantine & God, John Constantine & Jesus Christ, John Constantine & Papa Midnite
Kudos: 13





	Unrequited

**Author's Note:**

> A very Merry Christmas to you all! :D <3

It's Christmas Day and I'm over at the Midnight Club having a drink with Papa Midnite. He's staring at me from across the table in the back room and I can tell that he's wondering why I am drinking Scotch Whiskey on this the holiest of holidays with him, a nightclub hosting demon.

Although, to be honest, I used to wonder why Christmas was considered the _most_ sacred. Easter seemed to have more of a case to that claim, I used to think, until I realized that the son of God could hardly die if he had never been born in the first place. So after that epiphany, I had to concede.

Midnite probably thinks that I'm lonely after the massacre that wiped out a good portion of my former friends and allies. I guess, he _should_ be right. I also guess, I'd be considered a cold hearted bastard if I said that, while I miss them and I am alone this holiday season, I'm not all that _lonely_. 

Most people don't get that...that alone isn't lonely so I don't bother with explaining it.

I'm here to just have a drink and to let him know that I'm thinking of him. What I actually do think of him he probably doesn't want to know so I keep that to myself.

Before I leave, I hand Midnite a small little box and tell him that it's a present.

"A present from John Constantine?" he says to me in that deep melodious voice. "On this of all days?"

"Yeah," I fire back at him. "Peace on Earth goodwill to men."

"But I'm not a man," he replies and flickers suddenly to appear as he truly looks underneath his normal veneer. Then suddenly he's back to his black, beautiful self: something which wouldn't scare any blessedly ignorant citizen of this city of lost Angels. Unless they were a bigot and If they were I'd gladly wipe the floor with their ass, them being demonic in a uniquely _human_ way.

"Still the sentiment is true," is all I remark before I head out the door.

* * *

I knock on Angela Dodson's apartment door and I'm about to leave because nobody is coming when the door opens and I see the surviving Dodson sister staring at me in a mixture of annoyance, confusion and expectation.

I'm sorry for causing that last one the most.

"Here," I say handing her an envelope. "I was too busy to send it off."

It's a card. Hallmark. I heard those are supposed to be the best but I don't know why exactly. A card's a card: an image on the cover with some silly sentimental words on the inside which usually rhyme, making it all the more pointlessly cloying than it needs to be.

"Come in," she offers and opens the door wide. I can see her cat looking at me from inside and I am reminded of Hell and a woman whom looks like Angela standing there in a white hospital gown as everything stands damned around her.

"I can't," I decline.

I see the hurt in her eyes but I can't help it. She keeps expecting us to get together like in some film but it doesn't work that way. Not for me, at least. I'm not really interested in sex or romance. Flirting is as far as I get usually. This friendship that comes and goes, an easiness and fondness between us, is all that I can offer her and I just keep hoping she'll figure that out for herself one day.

I'm already in a relationship, I have realized.

I'm already in _love_.

The only thing is, just like Angela's feelings for me, it's unrequited.

* * *

There is a church nestled away in a corner of Los Angeles. It is as lost as anything else in the city. The Mexicans used to use it and its reflected in the darker toned skin of the Mary, Joseph and Jesus which sit behind the altar in plaster glory. They belong to the nativity display that the church used to place on the front lawn to lure local worshippers inside or to remind them of the true reason for the season.

I have come here every year on Christmas for over a decade now. I like to sit here in the littered and filthy pews; among pieces of trash and needles used by junkies whom have flocked to the building now that it has been as forsaken as they feel. I used to tell myself I came here because I wanted to be alone and that this deconsecrated church could offer that to me.

Although, to tell the truth again, I have felt alone most of my life.

This year, however, I know what really draws me here on this particular day.

I come to be with the One that I love.

I am in love with God. Even though I have spent most of my life hating Him in fierce anger I have come to accept that I love Him more than that hatred can ever equal.

Not in the way that some men love one another and some girls like two guys being in love with each other. This is in another way.

Probably in a more real and honest way.

I love God but it has nothing to do with sex or romance or all of that other bullshit. I love Him with no hope of getting laid or of him being there just to stroke my ego when I come home from a bad day at work or to have a house filled with little monsters that will all rush to call me "daddy." I guess, there's a bit of selfishness in there because I don't want to wind up in that Hell that I saw once long ago and can still visit now and again when the situation is just right.

But even that's not at the core of my love for Him. I started out running after God in order to save me from that Hell but along the way I fell in love with the Jerk and now I can't get out of it and I keep wishing that He would just love me in return or speak to me, at least, once in a while.

For, as certain as Hell, I also don't love him just so I won't feel lonely: loving Him, lonely is all I ever feel.

Because God is never here. 

Yet I can't get out of it...it's like being in quicksand where every inch of it envelops you and pulls you down further into a mess that you can no longer escape from. My love for God is that. Or maybe it's the fact that He can't love me back that is slowly making me fall into despair and death.

As I look up, however, my eyes come to rest on the statue of Jesus in the manager for some blasted ray of light chooses to shine on it through the broken stained glass of the old broken church window. Then the light shifts and it shines on a wall and I see it landing on a crucifix. And I stare in odd peace at the baby now fully grown and painfully nailed to a cross on the left hand side of the wall and I remember what a thousand street preachers shout out to anybody who will listen on the streets or write on their signs for all to read:

_"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believed in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."_

If it was still day, I'd think nothing of it. However, the sun traded its place with the moon hours ago and there remains only a few minutes before it turns midnight and Christmas bids its goodbye until next year.

And I think, as I sit in a supposedly vacant church, that maybe my love is not quite so unrequited after all.

And maybe I'm never as alone as I feel.


End file.
